Korenblat-Dissertation-Introduction.pdf
Steven-Korenblat-Sorbonne-Presentation.pdf
1 learned first that my discoveries in the Rockefeller Foundation and Prussian State Archives had come as something of a surprise to political scientists interested in the history of their discipline, because some authors had relied instead on Jaeckh’s accounts of his own activities in connection with the school. Archival sources revealed to me that instead of standing staunchly against the Nazis, as Jaeckh had recounted on several occasions, he had played a double game, attempting to curry favor with the Nazis while impressing the Rockefeller Foundation with his inside connections. The plan he arrived at was to allow the Hochschule to go under and to transfer his flag to a new venture, a Rockefeller Foundation research institute, one which he told the Foundation would be independent but which his organizational plans demonstrated would be obligingly friendly to the Nazis
After reading Eisfeld’s book, I began to wonder how could I have gone so wrong? Surely there were enough clues about for me to have made a more accurate assessment regarding the political composition of the faculty. But instead, I had a more glamorous story to tell about the destruction of an institution and the Diaspora of its faculty to the New World. This was certainly a true story; but not the whole truth. In fairness to myself and Professor Eisfeld’s view of my work, I will mention that he praised me for having accurately characterized Jaeckh and his circle not as democrats but as Vernunftrepublikaner, adherents of democracy as a matter of necessity, so that Germany would keep up and compete with the modernizing West in mobilization of human talent and resources. But I would also ask Professor Eisfeld whether in identifying me as he did, along with Roswitha Wollkopf, the East German doctoral student I mentioned earlier, he was really chiding his own colleagues in West Germany for being bested by an American and an East German?
The Hochschule may not have been a school for democracy or even as it enforced academic stratification, as progressive an institution as it had been, but the students who attended the Hochschule thought it was, and by and large they wanted to keep it that way. So, while I do concede that Professor Eisfeld got it right, and I did not, on nailing down the genuine identity of the Hochschule, I believe we should also take into account the widespread perception of the Hochschule as a school for the Republic. A myth perhaps. But even myths can serve a purpose.
First, we must have sympathy for anyone who lost a son in the senselessness of war. It could not have been easy for Jaeckh to have removed his son’s bust from the lobby of the school. Ido believe that much of his Wilsonian idealism, his cosmopolitan orientation, his belief in the peaceful resolution of disputes, was sincere; some of the political lessons he drew, his misjudgments, his deviousness and his outright dishonesty have all been mentioned. But let us remember one thing: Ernst Jaeckh was a college president. Doesn't that explain quite a lot?
First, we must have sympathy for anyone who lost a son in the senselessness of war. It could not have been easy for Jaeckh to have removed his son’s bust from the lobby of the school. Ido believe that much of his Wilsonian idealism, his cosmopolitan orientation, his belief in the peaceful resolution of disputes, was sincere; some of the political lessons he drew, his misjudgments, his deviousness and his outright dishonesty have all been mentioned. But let us remember one thing: Ernst Jaeckh was a college president. Doesn't that explain quite a lot?
mpact would have been had Eckart Kehr not died in the United States or Hermann Heller in Madrid shortly after exile from Germany. But overall, as I attempted to show in the thesis — and as I again tried to bring out in my article — the Hochschule was viewed as a potentially important institution from an educational and even a political standpoint, as the extensive support provided by both the Reich and Prussian governments suggests. In his post-war essay, Die deutsche Katastrophe, Friedrich Meinecke observed that the ‘Weimar Republic was doomed by the pundits and naysayers among Germany’s educated elites and in their salons and clubs and journals. Surely he had in mind the Ring Circle and its successors, among them those who formed the faculty of the Political College. That these figures made their way onto the faculty of the Hochschule cannot be denied, nor its significance for our understanding of the institution and its legacy in any way minimized. Nonetheless, at least with respect to the students, and to the minority of democratic faculty who were true to its founding spirit, they did not succeed in reorienting the perceived ethos and mission of the school, and that too must not be forgotten. Again, I thank you for the honor of being invited to join you at this conference and I look forward to our discussion.
Korenblat-Central-European-History.pdf
Ja¨ckh’s letter to Lammers, intended to seal his place in history as a courageous opponent of National Socialism, proved instead to be the undoing of his reputation and a critical turning point for that of his school as well. In 1988, Rainer Eisfeld, a political scientist at the University of Osnabru¨ck, completed a survey on the development of political science in West Germany for the History of Higher Education Annual.69 While the Hochschule of the Weimar era necessarily figured in the discussion, it was not the focus of his attention. Nevertheless, Eisfeld was struck by Ja¨ckh’s remarkable letter and its rarely expressed condemnation of anti-Semitism, which he cited in the article.70 Looking again closely at the Hochschule, he soon came upon two unpublished dissertations, this author’s 1978 thesis and another appearing in East Germany in 1983, both revealing shocking facts about Ja¨ckh’s actual dealings with the new regime.71 The first dissertation focused on Ja¨ckh’s negotiations with Nazi leaders, including Hans Heinrich Lammers, Chief of the Reich Chancellery under Hitler; and Bernhard Rust, the Nazi Prussian Minister of Education; as well as Ja¨ckh’s concurrent efforts to persuade the Rockefeller Foundation to renew its support of the Hochschule in the face of a rapidly deteriorating political situation.72 Hochschule records retained at the Prussian State Archives